Gift of Life’s Campus Ambassador Program (CAP), which brings donor recruitment onto college campuses through an internship program, is now in its 12th year.  Each summer we invite our top-performing interns from the previous academic year to visit our Boca Raton, Fla., headquarters for advanced learning sessions and networking.

This year, the top Campus Ambassadors participated in this educational retreat on August 10 and 11. The program kicked off with a meet-and-greet pizza mixer, where everyone was introduced and shared stories from their experiences as CAPs, as well as enjoying pizza and board games.

Two of the attendees were also stem cell transplant recipients, and, on Monday, they were excited to share the stories of their experiences.

“I was born with a serious condition, erythropoietic protoporphyria (EPP), that people may have heard of as ‘sun allergy’,” said University of South Carolina Campus Ambassador Madelyn Havard. “It means sun exposure causes extreme pain throughout the body. I couldn’t go outside without being completely covered, and when I participated in sports at school, had to be wrapped up from head to toe. By the time I was 12, I had developed liver complications from EPP, and the best option for a cure was a marrow transplant. When you hear, ‘You’ve got a match and you have a donation coming’, those words are so impactful! Once I recovered, I had this whole new life. That spring I decided that even though I could still barely walk from the treatment,  I would run cross country outside, without being covered.  I said, ‘I’m joining track’, and I did it. Not only did my marrow transplant save my life. I was even able to go to the beach yesterday. This transplant not only saved my life, but it also made it possible for me to simply go outside.”

The CAPs also had the opportunity to watch a screening of One in a Million, the new documentary film about Gift of Life CEO Jay Feinberg’s four-year search for his marrow donor, and how that grew to become the registry as it is today, with half-a-million volunteers registered.

Jodi Eisner, chairperson of the Annietober 365 Foundation, spoke to the Campus Ambassadors about the foundation's partnership with Gift of Life to recruit donors in honor of her daughter, Annie. 

The Campus Ambassadors had the honor of hearing Jodi Eisner, AnnieTober 365 Foundation Chairperson, speaking about the impact of helping to find new donors. The foundation partners with Gift of Life in memory of her daughter Annie, who lost her battle with leukemia. Annie’s legacy lives on in the combined work the foundation and Gift of Life do together, and every fall, CAPs run “AnnieTober” drives in her memory.

Students toured Gift of Life’s state-of-the-art Adelson Collection Center and visited each department to understand how the registry helps to save so many lives. The training curriculum featured in-depth sessions on partnering with other on-campus organizations to host drives, becoming a registered student organization on campus (required by many schools in order to run tabling events on campus), and panel discussions highlighting the experiences of other CAPs. The entire program was wrapped up with an advanced personal development session.

Participants also had the chance to visit the beach and enjoy the hotel pool, as well as several local restaurants, and a fun trip to the Topgolf driving range.

Since the program’s inception, the Campus Ambassadors, or CAPs, have added more than 148,000 new donors to the registry through holding on-campus recruitment drives, resulting in 13,000 matches for patients, and 1,270 completed lifesaving stem cell and marrow transplants. Because the donors most often requested by transplant centers are 18 to 35 years old, college campuses are the ideal places to find such candidates. 

“The purpose of the retreats is to celebrate the successes of our Campus Ambassadors and to give them the opportunity to learn from their peers,” said Gift of Life’s Donor Recruitment Director Chris Camacho, who leads the program. “These retreats are a reward and a form of advanced training for our top ambassadors based on performance and community impact.”

In the 2026-27 academic year, 527 CAPs will represent Gift of Life at 130 universities across the country. These students will be making educational presentations on campus about the registry’s mission and running hundreds of recruitment drives.

“The Campus Ambassador Program stands at the forefront of Gift of Life’s mission to grow our lifesaving registry,” said Camacho. “I am continually inspired by how our ambassadors not only achieve remarkable results and how they also raise the bar year after year. Our CAP Retreats celebrate these incredible achievements while collaborating on bold new strategies that will propel the program into the future.”

If you or a family member would like to serve as a Campus Ambassador, please visit our website for more information and to apply.